The Great Table Hunt

The other day, I remembered that my aunt had a protective cover for her dining room table. I used to think it was silly, but after the damage I inflicted on my table (blogged about here), I thought okay, maybe it wasn't so ridiculous after all.

Pictured is my dining room table in my beloved Minneapolis home. Picture was taken in 2006.

It took a little work, but I found exactly what I wanted online. Hard upper surface and soft under surface. The price was okay. I would prefer it be cheaper, but this was the area I expected it to be in, so yeah.

The instructions about measuring the table were on the site, but it also mentioned that if I had the make and model of my table, that they'd already have the information. Surely, I had this, right?

Did they email receipts in 2006 when I bought the table? Hmm.

I started a search of my email. And yes, I do have email back to 2006. I keep every email that might mean something some day, especially anything related to my writing.

A couple of searches didn't turn up any information. I tried to remember where I'd bought it, but drew a blank, so I couldn't search for the store name. It's also possible that in 2006, email receipts were not a thing yet. I can't recall this either.

That leaves me with one final hope--that I kept the paper receipt.

It's a possibility. My mom was adamant that I hang on to any receipt where the total was high enough to warrant special handling. The table would have fallen into this price range and I think I had some kind of extended agreement on the chairs in case they got marks on them and they wouldn't come out, so I would have needed the receipt for that.

If only I could figure out which credit card I used and where that file is. The hunt continues.

ETA: I can't find a receipt anywhere (so far), but I took a picture of the label on the underside of the table. I also used the Wayback Machine to check out the manufacturer's website and the store I'm (mostly) sure I bought it from. No luck on model name.

Hiccup Cures

A while back, I got the hiccups and did an online search for a cure. I found one that worked immediately, but didn't bookmark the site because, hey, I won't forget something this easy. (Yeah, right.) And even if I do forget, I can just do another online search and find it again. (Theoretically, this is true.)

So I got the hiccups a few minutes ago and (of course) I couldn't remember the easy no-fail cure. I also forgot exactly what search term I used originally to search the net because what I got this time as the top result was not very helpful.

The top result had several suggestions. One was to stick out my tongue. That did not work. Another option was a rectal massage. Um, time to check out the second search result.

Site number two also suggested sticking out my tongue. Strike one. Plug my ears and drink water through a straw. I guessed I could do that, but by the time I got to the kitchen and got a glass and a straw and filled it with water, the hiccups would probably end on their own. Strike two. And then I saw one that would be quick and easy to try--Hold my breath.

It worked! I held my breath until it became uncomfortable and when I released it, hiccups were gone. I'm not sure this is the cure I found the last time, but it worked so I don't care.

Suggested For You

Google has started this new section on their News page. Suggested For You. I'm not sure I like it for a couple of reasons. First, it reminds me that they're watching where I go on the net. Yeah, I know they do it, but I prefer not to think about it. This is a constant reminder. If it were only topics I'd searched for, that would be one thing, but some of their suggestions have got to becoming from articles I've clicked through to read from Twitter or Facebook. I'm fairly sure of this.

The other thing that makes me not sure I like the feature is that the suggestions are pretty lame. I think I searched for Frozen once and ended up getting that suggested to me over and over. I clicked no, not interested, but then I clicked through on Twitter about Frozen 2 and then the suggestions for the movie were back again. :-/

Today, I had Mark Twain in the suggestions. I'm trying to think how that triggered since I can't remember reading anything about him or his work for a long time.

Before you get the impression that I totally hate it, I don't. Because I did a couple of searches to research the Work In Progress (WIP) and since then Google has offered other suggestions that I've found helpful. This is also why I haven't checked to find out if there's a way to turn this off. Having information I didn't even know I needed delivered to me is pretty awesome. I just wish it was a little easier to fine tune it.

Mission Impossible

The house I bought doesn't have a built-in toilet paper dispenser in the bathrooms and no towel racks either. The couple who owns the house used one of those stand on the floor dispensers, but that takes up valuable real estate and the bathroom is one of the smaller rooms in the house.

At first I thought about getting a stand on the floor dispenser like they had, space or no space. It would certainly be the easiest way to go, but I could see me knocking it over or walking into it. Nah, best to get something built-in.

So I popped online and figured I'd find what I wanted and it would all be good. Only that's not what happened.

You see, I like the ceramic towel rack/toilet paper dispensers. Maybe it's because when I see the metal ones they're usually the cheap ones that look like crap, but I knew I didn't want metal. Period. The problem was I also did not want white. I wanted an off white, preferably the color they call biscuit, almond or some other color that is off white would work.

Yeah. You can't find it. Anywhere. I spent hours searching online. Hours. It was enough to make me cry.

(And as an aside, thanks so much Google for changing your search a few months back. I can't find anything now and when I try to put plus signs in, you find nothing. That's just so helpful.)

I finally found a set in biscuit on eBay that contains two towel racks, a toilet paper dispenser, and a soap dish. (I don't want the soap dish, but whatever, right?) The man had two sets left which was perfect since I had two bathrooms to outfit. But the shipping charge made me balk. Like more than $15.00 for one set.

After another hour of fruitless searching, including looking up the place in Minnesota where I went to pick out my bathroom stuff while my house was being built, I caved in. (That store in MN apparently doesn't handle anything except flooring now.) It's worth the shipping to not have to waste anymore time trying to find an actual store that carries off white, ceramic fixtures. What a totally frustrating evening.

House Hunting Part Four

I left off on Tuesday with making an offer on the house I really liked. Now the story continues.

I put in the offer with a noon Monday deadline for getting back to us. My Realtor said she expected to hear something that day, though, and I went home to wait. I stayed off the phone and did some online browsing for things I'd need to buy for the house. If I got it.

And I waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, at about 9:45 I decided it was probably time to wrap things up and go to bed. I wasn't going to hear anything tonight. Five minutes later the phone rang. The sellers had made a counteroffer.

They'd come back with a dollar figure that was higher than we'd expected, but still lower than the asking price. After some discussion, I slept on it and ultimately decided I wanted the house. Besides we had an appraisal as part of the contract. If the house didn't come in at what I was paying, everything reopened for negotiation.

So I said yes and initialed and signed a bazillion papers. Okay, maybe not a bazillion. They're saving that for the closing.

It made it official, though, I was under contract to buy a house in Georgia!

House Hunting Part Three

When I ended Part Two, I was fleeing in panic before committing myself to buying the house I thought I wanted.

Only I kept thinking about House 5--the one that had everything I wanted except a basement. It was lower priced than the builder's home by a big enough dollar figure that I could actually change the few things I wasn't crazy about and those items were few and far between. I even liked the colors the walls were painted.

I asked my agent if we could go back to House 5 and take another look. She set up an appointment for Sunday at 11am.

I went home, loaded all my pictures on the computer, and started thinking hard about what was really important to me. Did I want that basement enough to live in a cramped house with flooring and fixtures I wouldn't like and couldn't afford to replace for years?

House 5 wasn't brand new, but it was only five years old and had only had one owner. They'd taken good care of the house.

Other pluses were the lot was setup in a way that gave maximum privacy. There were houses behind it, but I could only see the roofs from the back patio. There were houses on either side of this house, but you couldn't really see any neighbors from the backyard either. And not only was it private, but it was quiet and serene. It would be a great place to recharge at the end of the day.

But no basement. All the boxes and books and dishes that I have stored in my Minnesota basement would have to fit--somehow--into the bedrooms or closets in the house. Some stuff I could get rid of, but a lot of it...well, not really.

The question then became did I want a basement so much that I would go with a house that didn't measure up to a house that had everything else I wanted?

I decided I wanted the house that had all the cool living space. I called my parents, figuring they'd talk me into the basement, but to my surprise, they didn't.

And when I went to bed that Saturday night, I knew that unless my second look at House 5 was a complete disaster, that was the house I'd be making an offer on. That was meant to be my house.

It shocked me. I always pictured my house with a basement. I also was surprised that there were things I liked about this house better than my house in Minnesota. That feels so disloyal, but then I remind myself that there are things in my MN home that I like better than House 5, too. I guess it evens out in the long run.

My second look at the house didn't change my mind. Sure there are some things I want to change--some of the light fixtures aren't to my taste, but then my style is modern/contemporary and most people prefer more traditional lighting. And I would like to screen in the patio to keep the bugs away. But ultimately, the house is move-in ready and I don't actually have to do anything to live there happily.

When we went back to my agent's office to put in my offer on the house, I didn't panic. I was a little nervous, but mostly calm and that's how I know I made the right choice for me.

Of course, then the nerves changed from making the right house decision to would the sellers accept my offer?

To Be Continued.

House Hunting Part Two

House hunting on Saturday didn't get off to the greatest of starts. My agent was a bit late because she'd gotten a phone call from another agent. The first house on our list of appointments already had five offers on it and she basically told my agent not to bother. This house had gone on sale like 2 days earlier.

House 1 off the list, sight unseen.

House 2 didn't get off to a good start either. We arrived to find: The owners still home, another set of house buyers looking during our time (they'd had an appointment for later in the day and just showed up), and repairmen there doing...something.

Everyone cleared out a few minutes after we got there, though, and we started to look around. It was a nice, two-story house with a lot of windows and light. Corner lot, but it was on a small, cul-de-sac street so it wouldn't be an unbearable amount of traffic. Fantastic landscaping and I liked the light fixtures they'd chosen.

But the master bathroom was small and so was the kitchen. The other rooms were upstairs, including a bonus room that was being used as a man cave. I liked it enough to keep it on the list, but I was kind of meh about it.

House 3 was a new house in a subdivision that had been started maybe 5 or 6 years ago? Maybe a little longer. We never got out of the car. My agent took one look at it's location (it was a on a corner lot) and said I'd have car lights from every direction because of how the roads were situated with the lot. I agreed with her.

House 4 was another new house in the same subdivision. Again, we never got out of the car. My agent took one look at the power lines going through the area behind the back yard and said I'd never be able to sell the place with that there. I thought health hazard and no, I didn't want to live behind the big, ginormous power line towers.

House 5 was at the top of a hill. A fairly steep hill. When my agent brought her car to a stop, I told her to put on the parking brake. I was afraid her car would roll down the hill if she didn't. To drive into that garage, you wouldn't be able to slow down much until you'd leveled off the car.

This house was a one story--ranch--with hardwood floors in the entry and kitchen, upgraded carpeting and padding in the rest of the house, a kitchen with plenty of storage room and a good sized pantry, granite counter tops, and big rooms. It was awesome. It even had an in-ground sprinkler system.

But no basement. I really wanted a basement.

House 6 was 3000 square feet, all brick, but built in 1989. We showed up to discover the reason it had so much square footage was that the owners had enclosed the garage and made it a room. Sort of. It wasn't a very pretty or useful room, so I don't know why they gave up the garage, but they had.

We needed to enter through the back door because there was a problem with the front one. The backyard was beautiful. Very private and large, especially for the area we were looking in.

As soon as we walked in, I decided it had to have been owned by an elderly lady. All the walls were stark white except for the borders around the walls near the ceiling. The kitchen had peach counter tops, ancient appliances, and the linoleum needed to be replaced. It was big, it had a built-in oven (which I love), but holy cow.

The rest of the tour didn't get any better. All the rooms were big and the bones of the house were good, but it would take another $50,000 dollars to fix everything that needed fixing, update all the old stuff, return the garage to being a garage and host of other issues.

Even if this house hadn't been priced slightly over the top of my budget, I wasn't willing to tackle a fixer-upper. Especially one this intensive. I crossed it off the list.

House 7 was the house I'd looked at on Wednesday, the one under construction and at the very top of my price range. Okay, beyond the very top of my budget, but my offer was going to be my max amount. We talked to the agent and I decided this was the house, so why not go ahead and put in an offer?

But as I started asking questions and realized I would have to take vinyl flooring and builder-grade carpet, that I would be allowed hardly any choice in anything at all, I panicked.

I said, "I have to think about this." And we left.

To Be Continued.

House Hunting Part One

With a closing date set for my home in Minnesota, it was time to go house hunting in Georgia. Being the obsessive/compulsive person that I am, I'd begun watching houses online about a year ago and that picked up in earnest a few months ago. I knew what area I wanted to live in and I knew what things were important to me in a house.

TBH, I didn't expect to find anything for a long, long time. You see, I really, really loved my house in Minnesota. I'd picked out the plans, I had it built, I chose everything from floor to ceiling, and it was a totally awesome home.

Last Wednesday, my agent and I looked at a house under construction. It was above my price range, but it had a basement and would be a brand new house. Two pluses for me.

When I got there and saw the lot, my heart sank. The road sat high and the house sat really low. All I could see was rain hitting the ground and streaming for the house.

We went in and walked around inside. It was a nice floor plan and had a lot of similarities to my house up north, but it was cramped. I swear it had to have less square footage because so much of the total was in the bonus room over the garage, not in the rooms on the main level.

Still, it wasn't too bad and it had a basement. We went down to look at it and there, against the front wall, was water. In fact, the red Georgia clay stained the entire length of one of the basement walls.

My agent called the builders agents and got some more information. The basement had been poured a long time before the walls and roof went up and that was probably where the water had come from. Also, the steep lot we saw wasn't what the final version would look like. There was a lot more grading to be done.

This left it on the list of possibilities. If the builder was willing to take less than what he was asking for. I didn't, however, want to commit to the first house I saw, so my agent and I made a date for Saturday.

To Be Continued.

Doppleganger?

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting discussion on one of my writer loops about doing a Google search before finalizing a pen name. The topic came up because a self-published author is using the name of a multi-published with New York author and another small press author was using a name that was nearly identical to another author's romance pseudonym.

The subject than turned to Googling character names. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I don't.

I pretty much have zero leeway on the first names, especially of my hero and heroine. It doesn't matter to them if I don't like the name or not, they tell me who they are and that's that. I've learned to deal with this, and in all honesty, I like it. The one time I was left to choose a name was torturous. Sometimes I still complain about not being the driver's seat, but as soon as I remember how miserable I was when I did have control, I shut up and say never mind.

Surnames, though, I do have some say in. Not always and sometimes not much, but the characters are rarely intractable on this score. And when the last names come too easily, I tend to Google. Sometimes it turns out there is a real person with that name. There was one time my hero's name was identical to someone who was arrested for a high profile crime. I can't help but think that I'd heard that man's name on the news at some point, and when my hero gave me his first name, my subconscious dredged out the felon's name. Needless to say, the hero had his surname changed.

Sometimes the name is completely set and I can't change it no matter what Google turns up. Like Mika Noguchi from Through a Crimson Veil. In the book, Mika makes a joke when Conor searches her name and discovers that Mika Noguchi is an Asian woman's wrestling champ. Why does she do this? Because there really is a Mika Noguchi who's a woman wrestler. This actually led to a running joke through the story.

Checking out a character's name isn't a bad thing, but I doubt there's any name out there that no one in the world has unless it's something totally made-up and bizarre, and even then, who knows? Where does the line get drawn? No, I wouldn't let a character named Brad Pitt loose in a book, but Mika Noguchi? I thought that was okay since there can't be that many of my readers who follow Asian woman's wrestling. In the end, I think it has to come down to a writer's best judgment.

Frustrated

My project for this weekend was to find a picture of a couple. Since this is going to be public when it's finished, I had to look to royalty free images that could be purchased. Even so, I thought the task would take an evening, I'd be finished, and could move on to something else. This isn't what happened.

The parameters I needed for the picture included a vertical orientation of the image itself. It would help if the picture was full length or nearly full length of the people. The man and the woman in the picture both needed to be attractive. And the final requirement was that it convey suspense.

It was amazing how impossible these criteria were.

If I wrote erotic romance, I would have had my couple in less than five minutes. But I don't write erotica, I write action/adventure romance. This is where the difficulty started.

The first problem was finding pictures where both the man and the woman were both attractive. I can't tell you how many times one of them was gorgeous and the other wasn't. This problem wouldn't have been insurmountable because there were plenty of pictures with two good looking people, but my other requirements... Sigh.

By far, the biggest and most annoying issue was the suspense part of the equation. Almost every single picture showed the couple smiling. The few where they weren't smiling usually depicted the couple having an argument. Awesome. Just what a romance writer wants.

I spent the vast majority of my weekend on this search. I'm guessing 20 hours or so total. In that time I found a grand total of 5 possibilities and I don't know if any of them will work for what I need. I'm hoping I don't have to do this again--three days was enough.

I'll share more about what this was about when it's all done and ready.

The Cabin

One of the questions I get asked with some frequency is whether or not I've used the places I've traveled to in any of my stories. The answer is yes. The Raft Cities were based on my experiences at Samarai Island which is part of Papua New Guinea and I've used Los Angeles a couple of times, but I only needed a real general kind of memory of those places. For the Work In Progress (WIP) I'm using a very specific location. The cabin.

Usually, if a Minnesotan says "the cabin," they're talking about northern Wisconsin or western Minnesota, but I'm talking about a cabin in Southern Wisconsin. Nearly in Illinois, as a matter of fact. It's a place I've only been to maybe a dozen times in my life, but it's perfect for the WIP because it's proximity to Chicago is going to cause my heroine some concern. :-) The problem is that while my memory is quite good, it's not good enough to remember the types of small details I need to insert into the book.

My parents have pictures. Somewhere. :-) I've asked them a few times now to look for them and today they finally turned up a few. All but one shot is taken outside. That isn't a huge help since the pictures are from September and the story is taking place in March. I need interior shots and lots of them. The search--I hope--will continue.

The shots I have aren't digital and the idea of scanning them in isn't exciting me. I'm thinking about taking pictures of the pictures with my digital camera to get them on my computer. The thing that's really amazing me right now is how quickly I've become used to all the shots being digital. I found a couple of disks in my basement last weekend and they were floppies! I'm like, OMG, I better hurry up and get them onto CD because if my laptop dies that has the floppy drive, I'm done. Technology. It's amazing. :-)

Mele Kalikimaka

Yesterday, I began my quest to hunt down the Hawaiian Christmas song I'd heard on the radio over the weekend. I went to the station's website, and while they did list the songs they played, it was only for the day, not for last Saturday. Uh-oh, I thought.

Fearing the worst, I did an online search for Hawaiian Christmas song and in a miracle of the season, I hit it on the first try. The title is Mele Kalikimaka. Half the battle was won. All that was left was figuring out who sang the version I heard and where to buy an MP3 of the song. It would turn out that my answer to both would be in the same place--Amazon.

In the back of my mind, I figured it would be Don Ho or some other Hawaiian musical artist, but I discovered the song was widely recorded by a lot of singers--a surprise to me since I'd never heard it before--and that none of them were Don Ho. :-) My top three candidates ended up being Bing Crosby (that was a surprise!), Jimmy Buffett and Chris Isaak. I decided Isaak was a long shot because I have his Heart-Shaped World CD and this didn't sound like him.

I listened to a clip from Bing Crosby and I was pretty sure it wasn't him, but these darn snippets are so short, it was hard to be 100% certain. I listened to Jimmy Buffett next. Hmm. Maybe. I tried Chris Isaak and I was right--it wasn't him. I listened to a few other versions, but it was definitely between Bing and Jimmy. After listening to each clip one more time, I decided it must have been Jimmy Buffett and bought the song. If I was wrong, it was only 89 cents. :-) After listening to the entire thing, I know I picked the right song.

So Mele Kalikimaka! It's the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day. :-)

Searching the Blogosphere

I have to be brief this morning. I looked out the window and the deck is wet and some of it is freezing so the roads could be icky. Again. Sigh.

I'm over 1000 blog posts here now. That's pretty darn cool because when I started this, I wasn't sure I'd stick with it. I had all kinds of diaries as a kid that were started and dropped within a matter of weeks. I even had a 5 year diary where there was only room for a short paragraph about the day and I couldn't even keep up with that. I'm better on the computer, I guess. :-) Or at least more prolific.

One of the things that always interests me is the stats on the blog. I can see what search terms people are using to find my blog. Right now, I'm getting a plethora of hits for "Golden Heart Judge." I mentioned getting my entry packet a couple of weeks ago. I'll also mention when I'm done judging, but that will be all I say about the contest, so I'm not quite sure why it's worth searching. There will be no mention of any particular entry, not by title or by subject matter and I'm sure other judges will be just as mum.

I also get a lot of hits for "how to hang a scarf valance." Some vindication since I'm clearly not the only one who's had a huge amount of trouble getting those damn things up. I have a picture from a catalog of two scarf valances swagged across a curtain rod exactly how I want to put mine up so it is possible to do it. Just apparently not by me.

I've gotten hits on oven smoke and on how to hang a bifold closet door. See? I'm not the only one with household issues/disasters. :-) And hits because of the television commercials I've talked about.

What's also interesting is the things I don't get any hits on. Like my movie reviews. :-) You'd think someone would be searching for movies, wouldn't you? Oh, well, I'm certainly no Roger Ebert when it comes to this, so probably it's just as well.

I have to run.